Translated from the Hindi by Swati Pal
1 By Umashankar Joshi, himself a Jnanpith Award–winning Gujarati writer and then president of the Sahitya Akademi, in a speech delivered on 31 July 1980 at the FICCI Auditorium, New Delhi.
2 Namwar Singh, Premchand aur Bharatiya Samaj [in Hindi: Premchand and Indian Society] (New Delhi: Rajkamal Prakashan, 2010), p.113. (My translation)
3 See Amrit Rai, Premchand: A Life, tr. from the Hindi by Harish Trivedi (New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1982).
4 Quoted in Rai, Premchand, p. 74.
5 Quoted in Rai, Premchand, p. 104. For a fuller discussion, see Harish Trivedi, ‘The Urdu Premchand, the Hindi Premchand’ (1984); reprinted in Literary Culture and Translation: New Aspects of Comparative Literature, eds. Dorothy M. Figueira and Chandra Mohan (New Delhi: Primus, 2017).
6 For dates and titles of Urdu and Hindi publications of Premchand I have throughout followed Kamal Kishore Goyanka, Premchand ki Kahaniyon ka Kalkramaanusar Adhyayan [in Hindi; Premchand’s Short Stories: A Chronological Study], (Delhi: Nataraj Prakashan, 2012), pp. 108–94.
7 John Keats to Benjamin Bailey, 22 November 1817, www.john-keats.com/briefe/221117.htm, accessed 8 November 2017.
8 Premchand, ‘Kahani-1’ (The Short Story-1) and ‘Upanyas’ (The Novel), both in Kuchh Vichar: Sahitya aur Bhasha Sambandhi [in Hindi: Some Thoughts on Literature and Language] (Allahabad: Saraswati Press, 1973), pp. 38–50.
9 Edward Said, On Late Style: Music and Literature against the Grain (New York: Pantheon Books, 2006).
10 Both the stories are collected in Premchand, Kafan [in Hindi: The Shroud] (Allahabad: Hans Prakashan, 1973), pp. 32–47, 79–95.
11 M. Asaduddin, ‘Premchand in English Translation: The Story of an “Afterlife”’, in Premchand in World Languages: Translation, Reception and Cinematic Representations, ed. M. Asaduddin (New Delhi: Routledge, 2016), pp. 40–41.
12 Harish Trivedi, ‘Premchand in English: One Translation, Two Originals’, in Premchand in World Languages, ed. M. Asaduddin (New Delhi: Routledge, 2016), pp. 15–39.
1 Harish Trivedi, ‘Premchand’s Art, the Purpose of Literature, and the Urdu–Hindi Middle Ground’, the Sixth Munshi Premchand Memorial Lecture delivered under the aegis of the Premchand Archive and Literary Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia, 26 August 2015 (New Delhi: Jamia Millia Islamia Premchand Archive and Literary Centre, 2016), p. 7.
2 The Urdu journals include Zamana, Hamdard, Tahzeeb-e Niswaan, Kahkashan, Azad, Khateeb, Adeeb, Subh-e Ummeed, Baharistan, Shabab-e Urdu, Nuqqad, and Al-Nazeer, among others. The Hindi journals include Madhuri, Navnidhi, Saraswati, Bharatendu, Vishal Bharat, Mansarovar, Chand, Jagaran, Hans, Prema, Prabha, Swadesh, Srisharda, Luxmi, Maryada, Aaj, Veena, Matwala, Usha, Gyanshakti Patrika and Sahitya Samalochak, among others.
3 In establishing chronology, I have benefited from the works of four Premchand scholars: Madan Gopal, Jafar Raza, Kamal Kishore Goyanka and Azimushshan Siddiqui. In addition, the Zamana archive at the Zakir Husain Library, Jamia Millia Islamia, was of great help. Unlike Tagore, who dated each of his manuscripts meticulously, Premchand was not very particular about either dating or preserving his manuscripts. In the absence of original manuscripts, it is very difficult to establish the date of first composition and the version—Hindi or Urdu—unless there is reliable corroborative evidence available, as it is with a story like ‘Kafan’. What, however, can be established from different sources is the first date of publication, which does not accurately indicate the date of composition. Thus, the chronology that has been worked out for this anthology indicates the date of publication and the version, Hindi or Urdu, in which the story was first published.
4 ‘Premchand ki Afsana Nigari’, Zamana: Premchand Issue, February 1938; rpt. National Council for Promotion of Urdu (New Delhi, 2002), p. 173.
5 ‘. . . He was also one of those who almost always took up social and political issues as central themes in his novels, stories, and plays. He was extremely sensitive to the political and social movements of his times and considered literature to be a potent medium for carrying, critiquing and analyzing prevalent ideas.’ Shashi Bhushan Upadhyay, ‘Representing the Underdogs: Dalits in the Literature of Premchand’, Studies in History, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Sage Publications, 2002).
6 ‘In a letter, he told Nigam that sometimes he followed the style of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee, and at others, that of Shams-ul-Ulema Azad Dehlavi. These days, Premchand added, “I have been reading the stories of Count Tolstoy, and I must admit that I have been deeply influenced by them.”’ Madan Gopal, Munshi Premchand: A Literary Biography (Bombay: Asia Publishing House, 1964), p. 98.
7 Gordon C. Roadarmel, The Gift of a Cow: A Translation of the Classic Novel Godaan (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), p. vi.
8 Amrit Rai (ed.), Vividh Prasang, Vol. III (Allahabad, 1978), pp. 249–50.
9 Geetanjali Pandey deals with Premchand’s complex response to women’s status in his fiction and non-fiction in her article, ‘How Equal? Women in Premchand’s Writings’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 21, No. 50 (Delhi: 13 December 1986), pp. 2183–2187. For additional insights, see Charu Gupta, ‘Portrayal of Women in Premchand’s Stories: A Critique’, Social Scientist, Vol. 19, No. 5/6 (May–June, 1991), pp. 88–113.
10 ‘I am Chitra. No goddess to be worshipped/Nor yet the object of common pity/to be brushed aside like a moth with indifference/If you deign to keep me by your side/in the path of danger and daring/If you allow me to share the great duties/of your life/Then you will know my true self.’ Sisir Kumar Das (ed), English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2004), cited in Malashri Lal, Tagore and the Feminine: A Journey in Translations (New Delhi: Sage, 2015), 181.
11 ‘Dhikkar’ and ‘Naagpooja’. In ‘Family Break-up’, ‘Mistress of the House’ and ‘Subhagi’ there is just the hint of a widow marriage at the end of the story.
12 Shailendra Kumar Singh, ‘Premchand’s Prose of Counter-Insurgency in Colonial North India’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2016.
13 A trenchant critique of this idyll has been provided in postcolonial India by Srilal Shukla in his Hindi novel, Raag Darbari (1968).
14 First published in the Hindi journal Pratap (December 1925); reprinted in India Today Sahitya Varshiki (India Today Literary Annual, 1995).
15 Alok Rai and Mushtaq Ali (eds.), Samaksh: Premchand
